


Schrödinger Had It Right

by WallyWasTaken



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, But also, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Wow, good ending though, regular timeline, this is long
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-03-01 08:58:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18797137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WallyWasTaken/pseuds/WallyWasTaken
Summary: The quantum-mechanical "Schrödinger's cat" paradox. In this interpretation, every event is a branch point. A cat is placed in a closed box and left there for multiple days. Until checked, the cat is both alive and dead—regardless of whether the box is opened—but the "alive" and "dead" cats are in different branches of the universe that are equally real but cannot interact with each other. By opening the box, the cat will be dead. If you never open the box, the cat is alive.Or, Babe drives a motorcycle into a tree, and the repercussions are stronger than they're supposed to be.





	Schrödinger Had It Right

**Author's Note:**

> wow!! this was spontaneous. thanks to my nightly horrific dreams, I bring you this.

* * *

 

Babe is thundering down the streets of lower Manhattan like a bullet, the growl of the motorcycle beneath him so violent and caged you could hear it blocks away, and he’s turning sharp corners, trying to escape the feeling of the wind behind him, of the distant honks of horns and bustling of the city, the general loudness that once was so comforting suddenly earsplitting. It’s maybe three in the morning--- or maybe it’s one. Maybe it’s four.

 

Time has been ridiculously hard to tell, ever since he woke up in an unfamiliar home in an even stranger block of the city because he’d thought he’d known the place by the back of his hand until he suddenly didn’t. This road was partly empty, a gap between all the others, and he only has to dodge so many parked cars and pedestrians before he’s back in the hustle of it, the slow three a.m. traffic of people trying to get home the only company. And none of it feels real, the blurry cracks of supposed reality filtering in now and then beneath the blur, distorted and sharp. And maybe he’s crying, or maybe the world around him is shuttering and changing so fast it can’t keep up a single appearance. Sometimes he’d have to swerve, from the screech of a car honk and the sudden flashes of red, but it would never matter because he’d be long gone by the time he connected the feeling to the words of what it was. Time didn’t exist, and Babe didn’t exist, too.

 

An angry honk stabs him blankly out of his state, and he narrowly dodges a taxi before the window rolls down of the car he nearly collided, and he has enough sense to get the idea of the basic gesture the man was giving him. But it doesn’t matter, because he’s lost in escaping the wind rushing his ears of the noise behind him, and burying it down, along with whatever life-changing accident he dodged, and soon the taxi and the gesture behind it didn’t exist either. The phone in his pocket might have been vibrating, but it could’ve also just have been the revving of his motorcycle as it screamed down the street, far too fast for any city limits.

 

Babe continues dodging cars and racing into upper Manhattan, with the odd determination to get away. He couldn’t tell what it was to get away from-- Maybe it was the city. Maybe it was himself.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


When he comes back to himself, enough that the blur shifts and focuses into something a little more comprehensible enough for his eyes to see, Babe realizes with a bitter coldness he has no idea where he is. He’d been taking so many random turns they blended in with the near escapes of a collision, and the towering buildings and parked cars lining the streets were replaced with empty fields on either side. He doesn’t have enough time to try and recognize it, because suddenly he’s next to a gas station and there’s a car pulling out, and he has to come to such an abrupt stop he nearly flies out of his seat. And he’s breathing hard because nothing exists, and the dips and divets of when things do-- _try to_  -- they end up nearly killing him. He’s probably seconds away until they do.

  
  


A man slides out of the car and turns to him, eyebrows so tightly knit all Babe can think is _this is it._

  
  


And then-- his face is different, in a sudden flash, too fast to even blink. It’s calmer, like someone familiar recognizing something they forgot. “Hey,” he says, and he’s standing in the middle of the road, the car swerved. There are gusts of breeze, and his hair keeps threatening to flicker with it as he shoves his hands in his pockets, and Babe thinks for a minute with such a horrible rush of clarity that Bill used to look just like that, when he was a kid, waiting for Babe on the street corner so they could rob the bakery next door of all the cookies they had. Then he realizes he doesn’t even know what color the guy's hair is, and the memory is wiped away with a sudden lack of existence, a flurry of nothing.

  


The guy is nothing like Bill, among closer inspection. Bill was-- a lot -- less narrow, more broadly built, not as skinny. The man was more pale, hunched his shoulders like he was trying to cave in on himself. “Where are you going?” He says.

  
  


“I have no idea,” Babe says, and his voice is raw and cracked. He can’t tell the difference of what’s real, anymore. Nothing is. The man huffs, looking away, out at the fields, hands shoved in his pockets.

  
  


“Then what’re you doing out here?” He says, and Babe’s not stupid enough to _not_ catch the foreign accent, the drawl of something far away hidden under his breath. How far away is he? What is he doing? The man rocks on his heels like he’s nervous, like he’s in a rush to get somewhere.

  


But Babe’s not rushing, all too suddenly, and he doesn’t rush for anyone. “Could ask you the same thing,” He stabs back, but there’s no real hate behind it. Just exhaustion. He realizes the guy’s hair is black, like Bill's, but suddenly it’s not-- suddenly it's dark and light brown, and black, all at once.

  


“Just driving,” he says, and he goes to shrug his shoulders, but it’s so small you could mistake it for breathing. “Got nowhere to be. Same as you.”

  


“I don’t even know you,” Babe says, and he sounds a little hysterical. Because nothing is real, and neither is he, and he has no idea what’s happening anymore. It’s his only question for how the man knows that, but then he’s hesitating. “Or-- do I? Do I know you?”

  


The man shakes his head, an almost frown, almost grimace. His shoulders are hunched like he’s freezing. He’s not Bill. “My name’s Eugene. Roe,” he says.

  


“Babe,” he says easily. Then he fumbles because he realizes how easy it is to misinterpret that. “Heffron, Babe Heffron.”

  


And Eugene jerks, just a bit, like he wants to move forward, but is losing energy with every word. And his eyebrows are furrowed, again, like he’s trying to determine something outside of himself. “Can I come with you?”

  


And Babe should say no, because nothing is real and nothing exists and he has no idea where he is, but-- nothing exists, and nothing is real. So, he says “Sure.” and Eugene is clutching the seat of the motorcycle behind him and they’re shooting down the road, again, like a bullet, leaving Eugene’s car behind and any evidence that only seemed wrong behind them, in a place that stopped existing quite a while ago.

  
  
  
  
  


They stop at a gas station, by the time the sun is fully up, and it’s maybe seven in the morning. Or eight, or nine, he doesn’t know. Time isn’t real, and they aren’t either. It’s easy for Babe to slide off the motorcycle and shove the keys in his pocket, but Eugene just about falls over, and all he does to help is snicker and laugh and grab his arm so he can steady his feet. And he remembers, distantly, the first time he got off it and couldn’t feel his legs for almost half an hour, but Eugene is stubborn and keeps trying to walk anyway. They’re silent for a while, minus Eugene’s half attempts to get up again and Babe’s snickers, but it’s good, and Babe’s content to just watch Eugene kick at the rocks on the concrete and wait for his legs to start working again.

  


“D’you want a slushie?” Babe says spontaneously, and his eyes shoot up to meet brown ones. He thinks he has cash in his wallet, but he doesn’t really know how much and it’s just kind of a half-assed attempt for conversation. Roe shakes his head, and Babe gets up from his place leaned against the wall to wander into the store.

  
  


He really only had enough money for one slushie, anyway.

  
  


Eugene pushes halfway through the glass doors, hesitating when he sees him already at the cash register and just stands, holds onto the door. Nobody is around, because nobody is real. The fluorescent lights in the gas station are so bright against the morning that Babe wants to throw up. Eugene waits until he's finished paying the empty register, and they returned to their spot leaned up against the gas station, except this time Babe has a blue slushie and frozen teeth and Eugene has a cigarette between his lips and a lighter in his hands.

  


“That stuff’ll kill you,” Babe says offhandedly like he doesn’t smoke himself, and Roe raises his eyebrow at him.

  
  


“And the slushie won’t?” He mutters back, and Babe snorts before sucking more of it down, and Eugene just breathes it out. When he looks up, there are no clouds in the sky and the sky is so blue he has to blink the tears out of his eyes, and there are still fields of nothing around them. If anything was real before, it definitely wasn’t anymore. Couldn’t be. Eugene breathes out a cloud of smoke and the nicotine smells like home, and when he looks up again, its barely morning and the sky is grey and there are no stars.

  
  


“What the hell am I doing,” Babe marvels, head snapping back to Eugene, because there’s nothing else to see. “Gene, what the hell are we doing.”

  
  
  


There’s no answer, and Babe looks back up at the sky, still the same this time. But when he looks away, Roe is not there and a wave of fear crashes over him. “Gene?” he says, and he’s walking around now, peeking around the corner of the gas station to see if he walked off. His voice is progressively getting louder, more frantic, and it’s echoing like nothing in his ears. He slams open the gas station door, not even slightly sorry about it, and wanders around inside it--- empty. “Gene?” He says, going back out, and looks up at the sky, but there are no stars. “Gene, cut this shit out.”

  


There’s a hand on his shoulder. It’s just a tap, but it shoots like ice through his veins, and Babe’s spinning around frantically but-- It’s just Eugene, and everything’s alright. It’s Eugene, with his impeccably tired eyes and a half-burnt cigarette in his lips. “You alright, Heffron?”

  
  


Babe only stares, confused, a little hurt, peering at the sky behind him. There are no stars. “What’s going on?”

  
  


“Nothing,” he says quickly, stomping out the rest of his cigarette, a waste. “We should go.”

  


But Babe’s heart hurts, and before he can wonder why Eugene is walking over to the motorcycle, cigarette filled pockets. “C’mon, Heffron,” He says, climbing onto it like he owns it. And nobody should ever really look that good on a motorcycle, it should be illegal, but Babe’s climbing on after him and revving the engine, and his brain is too filled with static to question anything anymore when his arms wrap around his waist.

  
  


They’re rolling out of the gas station slowly, and he can hear Eugene frown when he suddenly says, “Where are we going?”

  
  


And then Babe’s suddenly hysterical, and laughing so hard he might as well have been crying, and then they’re peeling out of the gas station and it stops existing, too. There are no cars on the street, and he has no idea where they are, but he’s exhausted and kind of decidedly going to go to a motel if it passes by, a motel he isn’t sure exists, and he’s excited as hell. He’s happy and he’s afraid of it.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


They roll into the parking lot of a motel, somehow, the first one that passed them by. It’s shady as hell because there are visible pots of weed in the back of on car’s trunk and the motel doesn’t even have a name, just the neon worded ‘MOTEL’ sign, and he doesn’t know if it would be any better if it _did_ have a name. They wander in together, Babe’s arm wrapped around Eugene to support his weight because his legs are useless again and he’s still stubborn as hell. The front desk is barren and empty, just like the gas station, and just like there he leaves some cash in the register after snagging a key. It’s really only a dollar and thirty-six cents, but.

  


It’s started to drizzle rain when they stumble back outside, and Eugene curses and sets himself to walking a little faster, eyeing the number on Babe’s key. Babe jams it into the door once they tumble to it, and has to kick it a couple of times because it’s shitty and stuck before it swings open and they’re able to escape the outside, which stops just as it begins once they close the door. The first thing he notices is that the motel room’s walls are pink, but then he shakes his head, because really they were white. The second thing he notices is that they got the keys to a room with one bed, not two, and he scrubs a hand over his face as Eugene leans his weight against the wall and notices the same thing.

  
  


“It’s-- I’ll grab new keys,” he says, but Eugene just shakes his head, not looking at him.

  
  


“It’s fine,” he says, and leaves it at that.

  


Babe plops on the bed, all the breath in his lungs escaping him. He’s tired, and if he breathes hard enough he can see the print of the bedsheets under his hand, see right through. And he doesn’t know when he closed his eyes, but when he opens them again Gene is asleep right next to him under the covers, face lack of any worry lines. The sky is still black and Eugene Roe is still here. He never wants to leave.

 

His thoughts drift away from Eugene, for a second, and he briefly wonders what time it is. Maybe it’s three. Maybe it’s four. Nothing exists outside of their room, and Babe finds he’s okay with that. He closes his eyes, and climbs under the covers.

  
  
  
  


________________________________________________________

  
  
  
  


He opens his eyes. Everything is white and there’s the dark shadow of trees towering above him, and he feels like there’s a huge weight on his chest, There’s a blur of worried faces all around him. He recognizes none of them-- or, really, he recognizes a few, as childhood friends and brothers and maybe-friends, but none of them are who he’s looking for. Maybe it’s fear he sees in their eyes. Maybe it’s regret.

  


“Gene?” Babe’s voice sounds terrible and-- _where the hell is he?_

  
  


“Babe?”

  


“Gene?” He calls numbly again, and then he closes his eyes and everything is dark. There are no stars and no lights, and he half expects for Eugene to be there, amongst the blurred faces or the empty nothingness, he doesn’t know.

  
  
  
  


________________________________________________________

  
  
  
  


Babe opens his eyes. He’s in the motel room, where the walls are pink and Eugene’s asleep, curled up and the blankets tucked above his nose, and there's such a huge wave of relief that floods through him that Babe wants to cry, wants to kiss him. He opts for just smiling and plopping back down from his sat up position, fuck if the movement woke him up, and almost laughs. He still smells like cigarette smoke from last night--- or this morning, or a couple of hours ago, but it doesn’t matter because time doesn’t exist, nothing exists but this-- and he’s relieved. Eugene’s eyes shoot open, and he sits up. He looks scared, for a second, before his eyes flicker with recognition and all he says is “Babe.”

  


Then he shudders out a sigh, and lays back down on the pillow and scrubs the sleep out of his eyes. “Go back to sleep,” he says.

  


“I will,” he says, but makes no real movements to do so. He’s undescribably happy, near full on grinning, and one of his feet finds Roe’s knee and he gently kicks at it, before he knees him back. And he can feel that, and this is _real,_ and if he can laugh and breathe and feel anything then it must be real. Eugene must be real.

  


“You called me Babe,” he says, and it feels right.

  


“I did,” Eugene says, and it feels wrong.

  


It’s quiet between them, for a while, and Babe’s eyes are half-lidded and he’s nearly asleep again before Eugene sighs and props himself back up, scrubbing the rest of the sleep out of his eyes. Babe peers up at him, but he just smiles back, a quick smile before his face drops again. “Go to sleep, Heffron. I’ll be here when you wake up.” And it sounds like a promise, so he pulls the blankets a little more over himself, and tries to pretend his eyes are closed and he’s asleep by the time Eugene tangles his hand in his, and then he really does close them again.

  
  
  


________________________________________________________

  


He opens his eyes. There are still trees towering above him, and at this point, Babe knows what it means. “Gene?” He calls, anyway, because he’s selfish. There’s a curled up figure next to him, the same pit he’s in, and it has black hair.

  


The person lifts their head, and strands of hair fall from beneath a helmet, an exhausted face. It’s handsome. It’s Bill. It’s a motherfucker. Babe feels like crying.

  


“Babe?” Bill’s voice sounds strained and exhausted, and Babe is selfish enough to want someone else there instead of his best friend, who is suffering. “Babe? You with me this time? Who’s Jean?”

  


He closes his eyes and tries his best to make it go away.

  
  
  
  


________________________________________________________

  
  
  


Babe opens his eyes. Eugene is staring down at him with a sort of odd expression, like he was quietly marveling at his existence. He must’ve been shocked with the fact that Babe woke up at all because he jerks back, at first, before leaning back in as if to hide he was doing anything at all. Babe raises an eyebrow, and Gene smiles. It’s the first one since they’ve met, and it bleeds so easy and smooth across his face that it shoots him like a bolt of lightning that Babe wants to kiss it off his face.

  


Nothing is real. So he does. Eugene returns it, but just gently, not as spontaneous. He turns it a little hesitant, slow as if he was just as unsure. “Is this real?” Babe says, after pulling away for air. Eugene shrugs, head a little tilted, staring right back at him.

 

“If you are, I am,” He says, easily. And his voice is slow, like honey, and Babe finds it doesn’t matter, anymore.

  


“Fuck it. Nevermind,” He says, and he’s kissing him again. “I don’t care. I love you--- I don’t care.”

  


Eugene just smiled into the kiss, which made it a little harder because then Babe was smiling, too, and he’s just so damn happy he can’t just _not_ be real, right? Babe’s imagination was definitely not this good. He couldn’t even think of his next move in rock paper scissors, this must be real. Babe doesn’t want to leave. He was content with it still being dark, he wants to ride to unknown place after unknown place with Gene, he never wants to see another goddamn star again. He sits up a little more, and Eugene cups his face in his hands, and he never wants to stop kissing him again.

  


“Where do you want to go?” Babe says, between kisses.

  


“Nowhere,” Gene says. He’s still holding his face in his hands, like he’s waiting for the world to crumble. Like if he doesn’t get enough in, he’ll never get to.

  


“Jesus Christ, I wish we could just, travel forever,” he says, tangling his fingers with Eugene’s on his face.

  


“We could do that,” he says, looking at him with a quirk in his lips. Babe sits up, dragging their hands away, looking for any signs of him not being serious. He’s afraid of what’s coming, but he can’t turn back time because it doesn’t even exist. Nothing exists. He can’t go forward, can’t go backward. Stuck. “We could.”

  


And all Babe can do is smile, and nod, a bit dumbly. “Okay,” he says. “Okay. Okay. Then let’s get some breakfast, and get the fuck out of here.”

  


Eugene just laughs, at that, as Babe pulls away. When he steals a glance outside the motel window, shifting past the stiff dirty curtains barely clinging to their rail, the sky is dark and it’s obviously not morning. But it feels like morning, and Babe wants breakfast a la fuckin’ now, so it must be. “Wanna shower before we go? I can grab clothes, while you’re in,”

  
  


But when he turns around, expecting Eugene to still be on the bed-- He’s not there. It’s empty and there aren’t even any creases that anyone had ever been there at all. The familiar fear crawls up his throat, the terror all over again. “Gene?” he says, and peeks around the bed to the floor, but there’s nothing. He’s about to leave the motel room, without his keys and in maybe days-old clothes if time even existed at all, when the bathroom door creaks open, and Eugene peeks through, water dripping from his hair and visibly hiding the rest of himself. “Gene,” he sighs, relieved, before all the blood rushes to his face because-- _god._

  
  


Gene sighs, like even he didn’t realize what happened. The jump in time, or, whatever this is. Whatever this was. “I’ll grab the clothes,” he says, quietly.

  


Okay, he nods.

  
  


What do you say, to that?

  
  


Afterward, they leave the room and the entire motel behind them. Babe wasn’t fond of the pink walls or the bed that he swore a spring was going to pop through and impale him anyway, so the thought of its lack of sudden existence neither scared or comforted him. There are no stars and it’s too dark to see anything and nothing existed until a truck he hadn’t seen suddenly swerves from the opposite lane to his own. Eugene lets out a surprised shout, and they collide. Chaos takes place, everything goes flying, and Babe watches as it all falls apart.

  
  
  


________________________________________________________

  
  


He opens his eyes. He jerks, suddenly, and hisses at the sharp pain assaulting his arm. Nobody is in the foxhole, with him, and he’s glad because he wouldn’t have been able to see shit, anyway: it’s too white. His eyes hurt, the kind of sting that makes you wonder if you’ve got a concussion or if you’re really blind, now, and he rubs his palms into them to get rid of the fuzziness, at least until the pain stings and shoots up his arm again and he drops it immediately.

  


When he looks around, there are trees towering around him, and if he looks far enough there’s another foxhole, empty just like his. And, there’s snow, blanketed around him, and the moonlight flickering between the heavy clouds glints off it, and it’s so quiet you could hear a pin drop. He has a watch slid under his jacket on his right arm, the one that hurts, and it reads 3:15, and he has to sit and glare at it, because he swore it was one in the morning the last time he was awake.

  


And there are stars.

  


He turns to the sound of boots crunching snow, something distinct and quiet-- Bill. The one and only Guarnere himself. He looks better.

  
  


“Hey,” he says, and he would smile if his face didn’t hurt like ass. “Bill, turn off the light, would ya? Can’t see shit.”

  


But he just laughs and slides close next to him in the foxhole. He looks him over, grinning, like he hasn’t slept in months and just found a real reason to. “How’re you feelin, ya dumb shit?” he jabs, and Babe just laughs bleakly back.

  


“Terrible,” he says. “What the hell happened?”

  
  


“You don’t remember?” He says, eyebrow raised, cuddling up to him immediately without shame. Which, he had to give him, it was so cold that cold wasn’t even the right word anymore. Babe just shakes his head, arms crossed and tucked into himself. He doesn’t have gloves.

  
  


“You, you glorious piece of shit, somehow got your hands on a motorcycle way in the German’s line, rode it all the way back, and rammed yourself into a tree,” he says, eyebrows raised, a stupid grin on his bearded face. “And still, the only shit damage you got was a huge splinter in your hand, which is bullshit because I even had to get a bullet in my ass.”

  


Babe doesn’t even feel like laughing with him. Just asks the most reasonable question he could come up with. “Was the bike okay?”

  
  


“You got your ass tossed from it into oblivion and have been out of it for two days, you _think_ it was okay?”

  
  


Babe gives him a smile, but he can’t shake the feeling he’s missing something, but he’ll have to deal with the others before he gets sucked into anything else. When he looks up, there’s a cloud above him, but if he turns just a little to the left, there are stars above him.

 

“Was it one in the morning?” Babe asks. When he looks up, where it’s still bright, and then shrugs away his jacket, looking at the time on his clock. “I don’t know. I don’t remember.” There should be no stars. Guarnere says nothing, as if he never even heard him, and before he can say anything else Babe falls asleep.

  
  
  


________________________________________________________

  
  
  
  


Babe wakes up to a black sky with no stars, and on his right, there’s a truck on fire. He can’t move because there’s a motorcycle on top of him, but he has just enough strength to move his neck. He sees Eugene, who’s laying a couple of feet away from him. Or maybe he’s yards away and the distance just seems close because space doesn’t exist.

  


The truck on his right is on fire, and the metal is creaking and screeching like a demon in hell, trying to drag anything down with it. Eugene isn’t moving at all, just laying on his side-- but he’s not dead, not until Babe checks. He just stares up at the void of anything sky and watches the flames lick at up it, like it can reach all the way up, but Babe knows it can’t because it isn’t even strong enough to light farther than him, leaving Eugene just barely in the still darkness.

  
  
  


Eugene’s skin glows from the warm orangish-red hue, and Babe closes his eyes.

  
  
  


________________________________________________________

  
  


Babe opens his eyes.

  
  


“Gene?”

  
  


“Yeah?”

  


He snaps his head to the side, and brown meets brown, but he realizes it's not _his_ Gene, but another Gene. Of course, it’s not his Eugene, because his Eugene is hopefully not-dead in a place where there are no stars and a truck is on fire. _His_ Eugene isn’t in a snowy foxhole with a dirty medic band wrapped around his arm, who seems to glow with silver borders. This Eugene is sitting in a frozen state of curiosity and impatience because -- because Babe had said something, said his name in a question.

  


“Oh,” is all Babe can breathe, because they look exactly alike, but are so much more different. He just lays his head back on Eugene’s shoulder, and he would apologize unabashedly if the gaping hole in his chest felt any smaller. The sun is streaming behind the clouds, and the world is light but the sky is heavy, and the hands on his watch aren’t ticking. It’s still 3:15 and he closes his eyes because there’s nothing else to do, bandaged hand and stiff shoulder in a foxhole.

  
  
  


________________________________________________________

  
  
  


Babe has trouble opening his eyes, this time, but he musters enough strength to peel his eyelids open and blearily look around. The sky is still black and he is hit with such a wave of relief, he can’t breathe all over again. He just lies there, on his back, the motorcycle still on top of him, listening to the crackling of the fire next to him and the endless blackness above him. He should probably try to get up and check if Eugene’s alright. A part of him doesn’t want to, though-- not because he doesn’t want him to be okay, because god, he wants him to be more than that, but more because he doesn’t know. Then Eugene will perpetually be in a state of life and death. Only when he checks, only when he tries to get up and checks his pulse will Eugene be alive or dead.

  


So Babe doesn’t check, or at least, doesn’t try to, not at the moment. He stares up at the sky and is lulled into a false sense of security because while everything is wrong, _nothing_ is wrong until he checks. He doesn’t have to determine if there are stars or not if he keeps his eyes closed, no car crash, no fire, just the sound. Ignorance is bliss, but it isn’t really in Babe’s character. No matter how much he pretends, he’s still crushed by a motorcycle and he knows there a fire, he knows he should get up and check on Eugene. Either way, ignorant or not, he doesn’t really get the luxury of ignorance. Not in his life. Not this time.

  


“Fuuuck,” he groans, hands grasping and at the destroyed metal and pushing it off his chest, elbowing himself into a more seated position. Everything hurts like he’d been shot with a thousand bullets all over his body and they were all sewn up by a kid who left all the metal inside, and his head hurts like a motherfucker. “Gene?” he calls.

  


He manages to turn onto his stomach, legs bent awkwardly as he digs his palms into the pavement and crawls towards the fire. It hurts his eyes, for more reasons than one. His muscles ache under the movement, and he fears standing up lest his legs betray him. There are two bodies, one face down in a puddle of something--- not blood, because it isn’t blood until he’s actually checked it --- pooling around it. The second is familiar, on its side, the light of the flames licking at his back.

  


He’s crawling to Eugene and, all too soon, he’s bent above him. “Gene?” he asks, and he wants to vomit once he recognizes those eyes. He’s so relieved he could’ve cried on the spot. He could be crying on the spot. There’s no one stopping him, not really.

  


“Hey,” he croaks, brown eyes looking up at him. And then he really does start crying, but Babe doesn’t acknowledge it, choosing to tangle his hands in his own hair.

  


“Jesus fucking Christ,” Babe says, turning to see the truck bleeding gasoline, the melting steel, and rubber, and says again, “Jesus fucking Christ.”

  


“Edward, those nuns really did do nothin’ on you,”

  


“Jesus Christ, Jesus Gene that-- the guys’ dead,” he says, and he doesn’t know why this one is hitting him harder than all the others. Eugene sits up, grabs his hands out of his hair.

  
  


“Heffron. Heffron it’s-- it’s okay,” he says, fingers absently rubbing his hands, getting him to look at him. “He didn’t exist. He didn’t. It’s okay.”

  
  


“What do you _mean_ he didn’t exist?” Babe shrieks, eyes flitting between his eyes and the burning truck. “What does this _mean?_ ”

  
  


Eugene pulls away, just a little bit. “You weren’t bothered by this stuff before,” he says, and he doesn’t sound like himself. He sighs, somehow gathering all his attention again. “Listen, Babe. He doesn’t have a family. He never did. Because you don’t know, so if you don’t know it don’t exist, and because nothing exists.”

  


“ _How_ ,” He says brokenly, exasperated, because goddammit, he's torn between some scientific anomaly and the fact that he really, really needs to kiss Eugene and close his eyes right goddamn now. And Eugene’s sitting next to him. “You said-- you fucking said when I asked if you were real that if I was, you were. What does that _mean?_ What does that _mean_ , Eugene?”

 

Eugene breathes. He looks away, and breathes again like he’s trying to gather himself together. Then he just looks at him, with this empty expression and Babe is suddenly filled with a fear that if he blinks, Eugene will disappear. Because nothing exists, and if nothing exists, then why would he? “You’re caught between two worlds. There's this one. And, the other one. That place, like this one, ain’t real if you are or aren’t here. You gotta pick. Open the box,” he says, waving his hands. All Babe can do is stare, heartbroken, confused.

  
  


"What -- What box what do you mean box--"

 

"This world. Or that one," Eugene explains. "The one with the trees and Bill and Not Me."

 

But that doesn't make sense, Because there can't be two Eugene's, or two worlds or anything like that. He just sits, broken, confused, surrounded in the glowing warmth of a car accident. No stars. No moon or sun, no dead body or motorcycle.

 

 

Eugene sighs, horrible and shaky, and lets go of his hands, standing up. “I knew it,” he says quietly.

  


“What?” Babe says, and his voice cracks.

  


“I knew it,” he says again. “You’d pick the other one.”

  


“You don’t know that,” Babe spits, and he sounds bitter. He looks at his hands.

  


“The reason there are no stars? The sky’s always black, space? Heffron, you were always going to pick something better.”

  


“You don’t know that!” He shouts. But when he looks up, there’s no one there.

  
  
  


________________________________________________________

  
  


“How’s your arm?” Buck asks, sitting awkwardly on at the edge of the foxhole Babe and all the others are eating together in, feet dangling. His shoulders seem too big, his hair too long and white but his face is familiar despite the disconnect from everything Babe feels. “Heard you were sleeping a lot.”

  


Babe laughs, and he’s almost not awake enough to tell if it’s forced or not, and lets the others crack the jokes for him. “You sure were sleeping a lot for someone without a concussion, though. You got a bird you’re dreamin’ about?”

  


Babe snorts, and since there’s nothing else to do, “Don’t see no girls out here, Buck, musta been you,” and that gets enough of a laugh to cover him up. “You know, I wish I could get away from everythin’. Fuckin Bastogne, and what not,” he says.

  
  


“That why you left?” Bill says, chewing, waving his hand around as he holds his tin can of their barely edible food.

  


“Yeah, ‘s why I left,” he says. Bill nods.

  


“You’re a fuckin’ moron.”

  


“Can’t help it--- must be in my blood or somethin,” Babe shrugs, pauses, remembering Bill on a street corner, before remembering he didn’t know him then at all. “It was a great feeling, though. I was just driving, and all I had to do was dodge some trees. The greatest feeling in my life.”

  


“Christ,” Luz chuckles, and then he feels kind of bad for saying anything at all. “ _That_ was the greatest feeling in your life?”

 

“No, I met--” Babe pauses. “I nearly ran over--”

  
  


“Jesus, Babe, that makes everything better. Y’know, if you really wanted some excitement, you could’ve come to any of us.” Buck sighs. And Babe caves, a little, because there are two conversations going on at the same time right now and Buck really has seen enough bullshit.

  


“I met someone, Buck. I met someone, I’m sure of it, just don’t remember--” he racks his brain for a memory he isn’t sure he possesses, “I swear.”

  


“That’s fine,” Buck says, sharp blue eyes patting him on the shoulder. “Not like you’ll see him again from here, anyway. Just eat your food and rest up,” he says before he’s standing back up and explaining himself away, to the next group.

  
  


_No, I remember someone,_ he wanted to say. _I remember I almost hit someone on the road._ But Babe blinks and shakes his head, because he was probably just thinking of a dream. He shoves the food in his mouth, and the snow is too white and the tears almost stinging his eyes are either from the lack of blinking he’s doing or the ache in his chest.

  


He’s getting up and shoving his tin back into his pack--- or, really, Bill is just walking him back to his foxhole -- until his shoulders jerk back. Someone had bumped into him, in his dazed state of mind, hurrying away.

 

“Sorry,” Babe mutters offhandedly, not really paying attention to anything above a foot tall. Suddenly, there’s a flash of something dark as the person he walked into brushes past him, and he nearly ignores it before his voice breaks and cracks. “Wait.”

  


The figure turns hurriedly. “Yeah, Heffron?” and he has black hair peppered with brown and traces of snow flaked in it, just where his helmet can't reach, and he has such rich chocolate brown eyes any guy who hasn't even got the pleasure to think of sweets would kill for, with an almost silver glow to himself and there's a flash of red---

 

 

 

"Eugene," he says, like he can't believe reality itself, a little breathless and frozen. Eugene Roe himself just furrows his eyebrows, parts his lips in question. And it should be damn illegal, how good that looks, and a part of him recognizes that it kind of is. All he can really do is shove his hand out, shaking and pale and frozen, to shake.

 

 

 

It starts there.

**Author's Note:**

> https://youtu.be/f5xLS_J6Rxg 
> 
> 's,, my favorite song thought it. Was nice for this fic


End file.
